“Today’s robots are awkward co-workers because they are often unable to predict what humans need. In hospitals, robots are employed to perform simple tasks such as delivering supplies and medications, but they have to be explicitly told what to do. A team from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) thinks that this will soon change, and that robots might be most effective by helping humans perform one of the most complex tasks of all: scheduling. In a pair of new papers, CSAIL researchers demonstrate a robot that, by learning from human workers, can help assign and schedule tasks in fields ranging from medicine to the military.”